John Martellaro was born at an early age and began writing about computers soon after that. With degrees in astrophysics (B.S.) and physics (M.S.), he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple. At Apple he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager, a Federal Account Executive and a High Performance Computing manager. His interests include chess, science fiction and astronomy. John is the host of the TMO podcast Background Mode.
CNBC writes:
In 2008, Apple design intern Angela Guzman worked with her mentor to design around 500 of the original emoji. Originally intended for a Japanese audience, Guzman had no idea emoji would become so popular worldwide.
Guzman is no longer at Apple. Say what?
Mission control at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, TX was the central hub for mission operations in the Apollo era. NBC has a nice video news piece on how it’s been perfectly restored, now a museum, just as it was 50 years ago. Right down to the ash trays and slide rules. Image and source credit: NBC News.
ZDNet writes: “The skills shortage is spreading further, with developers for data science, DevOps and cloud roles in high demand.” Citing recruiting research in the UK:
Harvey Nash director David Savage said the recruiter found the biggest skills shortages were in data science and analytics. He said because data science demands a narrow field of technical skills, plus a highly academic approach, there are huge problems in the talent pipeline and no clear or easy way to increase the number of available professionals.
There’s a shortage in the U.S. as well for highly skilled programmers.
CNET writes:
In just a few decades, we’ve gone from knowing of no planets beyond the solar system to thousands. Here’s how it happened.
The now retired spacecraft, Kepler, has been instrumental in the discovery of over 4,000 planets beyond our solar system. Referenced here: CNET article and NASA video.
Darren Beyer is a former NASA Space Shuttle engineer at Kennedy Space Center who worked on launching and recovering more than a dozen missions. He also conducted astronaut training and had the honor of working onboard every Space Shuttle orbiter except Challenger. In late 1998, he left NASA to become an author.
The result was the Anghazi series of novels, Casimir Bridge, released in 2016 to rave reviews thanks largely to his commitment to putting the science back in science fiction. The second installment, Pathogen Protocol was released in October, 2018. In this second show with Darren, we continue our previous discussion: Back to the Moon first or off to Mars first? With robot companions? Industrializing the Moon. Plus: Darren’s approach to the third novel in the Anghazi series and an explanation of how his characters achieve interstellar travel.
Highly rated, Orbitrack, from Southern Stars, lets you explore the universe of spacecraft in orbit around our home planet and is available in the Apple App Store now for US$4.99 (free on 7/20) and for Android in the second half of 2019.
John has loved his 2015 MacBook. It served him well.
From FastCompany: “A hospital introduced a robot to help nurses. They didn’t expect it to be so popular”
That means nurses don’t even have to remember certain tasks that used to be part of their daily job, which is a meaningful way to reduce their cognitive load. “They don’t have to think about telling the robot to do things,” says [Vivian] Chu, who has a PhD in robotics from Georgia Tech.
This kind of optimized offloading will help workers focus on being even more productive. That is, if employers figure that out. [Image credit: FastCompany.]
Br. Guy Consolmagno earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Planetary Science from MIT and his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He’s been at the Vatican Observatory since 1993 and is currently the director there where his research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies. Br. Guy has co-authored two astronomy books as well as popular books such as Would you Baptize and Extraterrestrial?” He is a Jesuit Brother.
We chatted about Br. Guy’s post-graduate work, how he came to be at the Vatican Observatory—and then become the director. He explained why the Vatican has an observatory and how the Catholic Church is not anti-science. Actually he is just part of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that advises the Pope. And there was much, much more.
BBC News has published a very readable/viewable explanation of biockchains. (Something you should know about.)
Enthusiasts say blockchain could become as disruptive as the internet, comparing the technology to the World Wide Web in the 1990s. At that time, many people were clear it would become important – but few really understood it, or foresaw its potential and limitations.
At Roughly Drafted, Daniel Eran Dilger, diagnoses a recent assertion by Bill Gates regarding Microsoft, iOS and Android.
As Apple prepares the release of iOS 13 and splits off the new iPadOS 13 for specialized mobile tablets, Microsoft’s former chief executive Bill Gates mused this week that it would have been the “natural thing” for Microsoft to have been the “standard non-Apple phone platform.” But he’s wrong, here’s why.
A recent article prompted John to pull together a reference page for some fundamental changes in the structure of macOS Catalina.
Business Insider, with the pending departure of Apple’s Jony Ive, takes the opportunity to summarize the other senior executives who have left Apple recently. Who they are, what they did, and why they left. Photos provided of almost all.
Mike Bombich is the founder and president of Bombich Software, the developer of Carbon Copy Cloner. That’s a backup app for the Mac that has saved the day for many users. He’s a former Apple employee.
In this timely post-WWDC show, Mike joins me to explain the structure of APFS drives and the new read-only System files in macOS Catalina. He explained new features of volumes in macOS 10.15, especially how the System is isolated from the Data volume (which contains /Users). He also explained the new firmlinks that tie these two volumes together, making them appear as one. Finally, Mike explained how Carbon Copy Cloner external drives can no longer be HFS+ in Catalina but must become APFS.
The long, sad tale of iTunes is recounted in this extensive, charming essay. It provides us with many lessons to learn about Apple.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Ian King report:
Apple Inc. hired one of ARM Holdings Inc.’s top chip engineers as the iPhone maker looks to expand its own chip development to more powerful devices, including the Mac, and new categories like a headset.
The company hired Mike Filippo in May for a chip architect position, according to his LinkedIn profile.
For Apple to divest the Mac of Intel CPUs while maintaining X86 compatibility will require some serious engineering skill. This looks like one step in the process.
There are popular products in Apple’s lineup of consumer products. But the resurgence of the Mac suggests that Apple realizes that scientists won’t be doing research that changes the world on an iPad.
At WWDC 2019, Apple announced that macOS Catalina would reside in its own read-only volume. Security is greatly enhanced.
It could be a political move, a ploy, amidst tariff tensions between the U.S. and China. Or it could be something else. USA Today reports:
The U.S. is considering a requirement that next-generation 5G cellular technology for domestic use be made outside of China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing sources.
John Kheit is a New York attorney and a regular contributor to The Mac Observer. We share many common interests, including the 4K/UHD/HDR TV revolution, 8K TV and displays, Wi-Fi/5G technologies and the state of Apple.
In this special post-WWDC show, we chatted about author Kheit’s view of the new Mac Pro. He believes that while the 2019 Mac Pro will meet the needs of most technical and creative professionals, Apple also betrayed an important group of influencers, the Mac enthusiasts by not offering a lower cost model. We discussed various ways Apple could have achieved that goal, and that might suggest a future variation of the current model. John K. has strong feelings about this Mac and wasn’t shy about expressing them.
Previously, Apple updated the firmware for the AirPort Extreme. Now, the older, 802.11n, AirPort Base Station and its siblings have also been updated.
Firmware update 7.8.1 improves the security of your base station and is recommended for all Apple 802.11n Wi-Fi base stations including AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule.
Gizmodo writes:
…if you really want a reminder of just how dumb everything is in 2019, check out this video from GE, which recently went viral on Twitter. GE even had the audacity to call it a “smart” light bulb.
A video from GE demonstrates some really bad design decisions. Really bad.
Mel Magazine writes:
A generation raised on mp3s and Spotify are collecting [CD] discs like vinyl — but for reasons that have almost nothing to do with the music.
Did you throw all yours away?
Disney+ won’t launch until November 12, but it’s already putting strategic pressure on Apple TV+. Apple has found itself in a bind.
![A Very Understandable Primer on Blockchains [with Video]](https://www.macobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Blockchain-primer.webp)
